In a wireless network system, different operators own different spectrums. These dedicated spectrums provide services to only specific operators, and therefore are referred to as licensed spectrums. Each operator has a specific planned spectrum, and different operators do not conflict with each other. Correspondingly, some spectrums do not provide services to a specific operator, and the spectrums that have not been planned are referred to as unlicensed spectrums. With development of communications technologies, to better satisfy user requirements, multiple operators start to use unplanned spectrums to transmit data, so as to improve a system throughput. However, because all operators can use unlicensed spectrums, different operators preempt a same physical resource when multiple operators transmit data in a same unlicensed spectrum. Therefore, in an unlicensed spectrum, user equipment may simultaneously receive data or reference signals sent by two or more different operators. Consequently, the user equipment cannot correctly parse the data or measure a channel due to incapability of identifying the different operators.